Some of the girls frowned their disappointment at being left out, but others clapped their hands.  Laura and Belle stepped on the scow’s platform.

“I wouldn’t try to go, if I were you, Dan,” urged.  Dick, as young Dalzell stepped forward to board the scow.

“I’m all right,” Dan insisted.

“Sure you’re all right?” questioned Hiram Driggs, eyeing Danny Grin’s wobbly figure.

“Of course I am,” Dan protested, though he spoke rather weakly.

“Then there’s a more important job for you,” declared Mr. Driggs.  “Stay here on the float with the rest of the young ladies, and explain to them just what you see us doing out yonder.”

There was the sound of finality about the boat builder’s voice, kindly as it was.

“Cast off,” ordered Driggs, taking the tiller.  “Tune up that engine and give us some headway.”

Clara Marshall was thoughtful enough to run back and get a chair, which she brought down to the float and placed behind Dalzell.

“Sit down,” she urged.

“Thank you,” said Dan gratefully, “but I didn’t need a chair.”

Nevertheless the high school girls persuaded him to be seated.

“I—–­I wasn’t drowned, you know,” Dan protested as he sat down.

“No; but you got a little water into your lungs,” responded one of the girls.  “I heard Mr. Driggs tell Dick Prescott that, as nearly as they could guess, you opened your mouth a trifle just before Dick and Dave reached you and freed you from that awful trap.  Mr. Driggs said that if you had been under water two minutes longer there would have been a different story to tell.”

“I wonder how long I was under water?” mused Dan.

“Long enough to drown, Danny Grin,” replied Clara Marshall gravely.

Meanwhile the scow was making slow headway out into the river and slightly up stream.

“Dick, don’t you think this canoeing is going to prove too dangerous a sport for you boys?” asked Laura, regarding him with anxious eyes.

“Not when we get so that we know how to behave ourselves in a canoe, Laura,” young Prescott answered.

“Yet, no matter how skilful you become, some unexpected accident may happen at any moment,” she urged.

“You wouldn’t have us be mollycoddles, would you?” asked Dick in surprise.

“Certainly not,” replied Laura with emphasis.

“Yet you would advise us to avoid everything that may have some touch of danger in it.”

“I wouldn’t advise that, either,” Laura contended with sweet
seriousness.   “But-----”

“You’d like to see us play football some day, wouldn’t you?”

“I certainly hope you’ll make the high school eleven.”

“Football is undoubtedly more dangerous than canoeing,” Dick claimed.

“It seems too bad that boys’ best sports should be so dangerous, doesn’t it?” questioned young Miss Bentley.